The Supreme Court on Friday criticised the National Testing Agency for the “flip-flops” it made in relation to the conduct of the 2024 undergraduate National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, Live Law reported.

The examination, conducted by the National Testing Agency for admissions to undergraduate medical courses, was held on May 5.

After the results were announced on June 4, allegations of question paper leaks and other irregularities came to light. The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested 21 accused persons in the paper leak case from Bihar and Jharkhand so far.

On Friday, a bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud was giving detailed reasoning for its July 23 order that refused to cancel the examination over allegations of paper leak and malpractices.

While there was no evidence of the leak being widespread enough to violate the sanctity of the entire examination, the National Testing Agency had made lapses, the court held, Live Law reported.

Chandrachud said that the authority must avoid the flip-flops that it made in the matter. “These flip-flops in the NTA do not serve the interest of the students,” he was quoted as saying.

The chief justice highlighted that the agency had awarded grace marks to more than 1,500 candidates to compensate for the loss of time they suffered after being given the wrong question papers. But the grace marks were later retracted and the affected students were given the choice to rewrite the test.

The National Testing Agency had also decided to award grace marks to candidates who attempted a second option for an ambiguous question. This had led 44 candidates to get full 720 marks. However, an expert panel constituted by the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, as directed by the court, later said that the question had only one correct answer. The court directed the agency to revise the results accordingly.

The court also gave additional directions to the expert committee that the Centre had formed in June to make the examination process more robust.

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